Daughter of Henri V of France and Marie de Medici, 15-year-old Henrietta Maria needed special dispensation from the pope to marry the 25-year-old English king Charles I in 1625. The marriage was primarily intended to cement an alliance between France and England, and Charles more or less ignored the queen. However, when his favourite, the duke of Buckingham, was assassinated in 1628, Charles transferred his affections to her – they eventually had nine children.
From the start, Henrietta Maria was a problem for the English Puritans. Her Catholicism was an obviously stumbling block, but so was what they saw as her unseemly involvement with the arts – she even took part in performances. Charles increasingly used her as a sounding board and source of advice, and she in turn acted on his behalf by appealing for aid from the pope and fellow Catholics.
Charles was becoming increasingly upset with Parliament, and when it was rumoured that MPs were about to charge the queen with misconduct, he decided – with Henrietta Maria's encouragement – to arrest the five he saw as the ring leaders. It ended disastrously, and was yet another step towards civil war.
When that war looked inevitable, the queen left for the Netherlands (the king watching from the coast to keep her ship in sight until the last moment), where she spent a year pawning her jewels and spending the vast proceeds on weapons and ammunition. Braving storms and parliamentary ships, she brought them to England and eventually joined her husband in Oxford in July 1643. There she remained until she travelled to the West Country in April 1644 to give birth to her ninth child.
She never saw the king again. As parliamentary forces closed in on her, she fled from Falmouth to France in July 1644. She corresponded with Charles, trying to convince him to be more flexible in his negotiations with the Parliamentarians after he was defeated and captured. She also was involved in intrigues on his behalf – all in vain.
Henrietta Maria never got over Charles's execution in January 1649 – she wore black for the rest of her life. After her son, now styling himself Charles II, lost the Battle of Worcester in 1651, her influence on him virtually disappeared, and they were further estranged when she tried to convert her youngest son Henry, duke of Gloucester, to Catholicism. She followed Charles back to England on the restoration in 1660, but returned to France five years later, dying there on 21 August 1669.
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 Queen Henrietta Maria, 1609-69
www.british-civil-wars.co.uk/biog/henrie
tta-maria.htm
Pithy biography that conveys something of the personality of the queen and her life.
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Henrietta Maria: Charles I's indomitable queen by Alison Plowden (Sutton, 2001)
This study gives a clear picture of the period leading up to and including the Civil War. There is an examination of the queen's political influence (or lack of it) and the tensions and intrigues surrounding the various factions at court, and many long-held misconceptions are exploded.
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